"I was part of an organisation that belonged to the resistance to the dictatorship. I was detained by agents of the political police, the CNI, and they took me to a secret prison, a secret torture centre, which I believe was the Gen Borgono garrison in Santiago.

They beat me and used electric cables on me, they gave me injections and shouted insults at me. In fact, they used a series of ritual methods of torture and treated me the way they used to treat political prisoners.

Torture is an extreme situation for one human being to impose on another. Under torture, you get to know about horror. At the end of one session of torture, you're afraid that it's going to start all over again.

You learn to be terrified of interrogation. You resist it in various ways. Perhaps I resisted it because I told myself I wasn't going to be killed. Maybe that's why I'm still alive.

But also there was pressure from human rights organisations in Chile, which were probably the only institutions during the dictatorship that opposed torture and the crimes that the dictatorship was committing and dared to say no......"

A leaked police investigation of the Deepcut army base in Surrey has unearthed claims of rape, racism, beatings and harassment.

Parts of an inquiry into the deaths of four recruits, leaked to Channel 4, contain more than 150 allegations about Deepcut and other bases. claims of rape, sexual and racial abuse. Cadets forced to swim though a cesspool and urinated on while they were asleep.

Geoff Gray, whose 17-year-old son died at the base, said he felt "sick" that his son had gone to an "evil place".

A public inquiry into four deaths at the barracks has previously been ruled out by Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram.

In May, he insisted that Surrey Police's inquiries and other investigations had found no evidence "to indicate any prospect of a prosecution directly related to these deaths".

Geoff Gray, 17, from Seaham, Durham; James Collinson, 17, from Perth, Cheryl James, 18, from north Wales and Sean Benton, 20, of Hastings, East Sussex, all died from gunshot wounds.

The families do not accept that the deaths of the four soldiers were suicides.

"This dossier suggests there is a culture of bullying and sexual assault, there's over 100 allegations in here. This is a catalogue of misery where young children have joined the army and have been subjected to sexual and physical harrassment."

US state with racist history votes to keep 'separate schools for white and coloured children' as part of constitution..... "I say: Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation for ever." said George Wallace the Alabama governor in 1963. A statute banning interracial marriage in the state was struck down only four years ago by 59% to 41%, with a majority of whites voting against the change.

This year Tom Parker was elected to the Alabama supreme court even after it became clear that he had been handing out Confederate flags while campaigning and had attended a function honouring the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Britain's information watchdog attacks ID card schemeInformation Commissioner Richard Thomas says the scheme could result in the UK "sleepwalking into a surveillance society". He raised concerns over ID cards, a separate population register proposed and plans for a database of every child from birth to the age of 18.

he added, "Some of my counterparts in eastern Europe have experienced in the last century what can happen when government gets too powerful and has too much information on citizens."

in 1987 Australian citizens managed to stop their government from introducing a national identity card system. The sophistication of public debate was highly developed. Massive opposition to the plans in Australia reached the point of open civil disobedience.

Australians understood that the introduction of such a scheme would reduce freedoms and increase the powers of authorities. Indeed “freedom” would come to mean the freedoms granted by the card.

the australian opposition movement, the largest in recent Australian history, forced a dissolution of the parliament, a general election, and unprecedented divisions within the Labour government. The issues which were raised in this campaign provide important insights into the range of concerns related to ID cards in every country.

plus: WE ARE SUBJECTS NOT CITIZENSThe UK has one of the oldest and most powerful monarchies in the world. While some other democratic countries still have monarchies - such as Spain, Norway, and Belgium - they all have written constitutions which spell out what powers those monarchies should have. And the people living there are citizens of the country who swear loyalty to the constitution rather than to the monarch.

In the UK the situation is more complex. We do not have a written constitution, and so much of our monarchy's powers are based on custom and not very clearly defined. Also, we are not citizens of the UK but subjects of the monarch of the UK. it is time to demand a Citizens' Constitution.

In common English usage, the word "person" is a synonym for "human." In philosophy, however, there have been debates over the precise meaning and correct usage of the word and over the criteria for personhood.

The debate about personhood is nowhere close to being resolved, but rather will likely become more complicated with the introduction of advanced robots and artificial intelligences that some argue merit personhood status.

Being InvisibleNext-gen optical camouflage is busting out of defense labs and into the street. Susumu Tachi, an engineering professor at the University of Tokyo, demonstrated a crude invisibility cloak...... or "Stick a webcam on your back and hold your laptop in front of you, screen facing out. Your friends will see right through you. It's a great party trick"

Most solids have less empty space between their molecular parts than their liquid or gaseous forms.

almost 97 percent of our bodies is made up of the big four molecules- carbon 19.4%, hydrogen 9.3%, nitrogen 5.1%, and most of all, oxygen with 62.8%.

Atoms cannot be created or destroyed (except in nuclear reactions, which don't occur in biology). So all the matter (physical material) of the bodies of all living things comes from shuffling atoms around between living things (as when we eat) or from interactions with the environment (as when we breathe).

The nutrients we get from eating foods provide the necessary molecules our bodies need to grow and function properly.

There is a gulf between inanimate matter and living things. A piece of granite is very different to a plant. A granite rock fragment was formed three billion years ago. Today its modification requires concerted effort and significant expenditure of energy. A plant, composed of carbon dioxide, water and sunlight, can trace its history to a seed or cutting planted in rather recent times. In a year a potted plant on the window ledge will have changed dramatically. Its leaves will have exchanged large volumes of gas with the atmosphere, and if the plant has been cared for, it will have absorbed several gallons of water. The granite fragment will be exactly as it was just after it was formed. Yet the same forces which keep the rock constant permit the living things to change and evolve.

Humans shed and regrow outer skin cells about every 27 days; that is almost 1,000 new skins in a lifetime.

"It's hard for people coming from other cultural and educational backgrounds to accept the fact that people can become jaguars or trees."

"yet in another sense it is very easy for us to accept the fact that we have an incredible cellular shapeshifting capacity."

"When I first started bringing people with cancer to the shaman for healing, the shaman would look inside them as they do using what they call pentsak, which is a technique for actually looking inside a person's body. They would look inside these North Americans' bodies and see these outrageous growths that they'd never seen anything like before. Now cancer is a very strong cellular shapeshift."

"cancer and spontaneous healings are actually forms of shapeshifting on the physical level in the body"

"And we pretty readily accept that. We have a much more difficult time accepting that people can shapeshift into a jaguar. The Shuar in the Amazon is a tribe that I work with a lot. From one perspective, it is very hard for them to understand how a person can get a cancer and E. coli for example. But it is very easy for them to accept how a person can shapeshift into a tree or animal. It is a matter of what tradition we are brought up in and both are very possible."

the inherent ramifications of the shape-shifting phenomena alert us that we have invested the entirety of our stock-in-trade in the "absolute" "nature" of human identity! If nothing else, we have built a game and fashioned its rules without even taking into consideration the possibility of exceptions to those rules, a fatal error we have made time and time again. Inevitably, doing so also puts us at serious risk of having virtually backed ourselves into a corner.

What would happen if we were to come to the realization that shape-shifting is the actualization of some of our most important goals in biology and medicine?

According to Roman Catholic dogma the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ.

Some modernist Roman Catholic theologians sought to interpret transubstantiation as only a change of meaning and not a change of substance, however in 1965 Pope Paul VI mandated the retention of the original dogma of the 12th century.

It should be noted that the Catholic Church is aware of events, where the bread and/or the wine really and truly underwent transubstantiation in both their spiritual as well as physical forms during a mass. Probably the most famous such event was the 12th century Miracle of Lanciano. The heart tissue that used to be eucharistic wafer is still preserved and on display in the small italian town of Lanciano. It (he) has received forensic examination in the late 1970s.

Many monsters were created on the Sixth Day, some destroyed during the Flood, some still with us. The re'em is described as a giant even among these strange animals. At any given time, only two exist, one male and one female, because had more of them existed, the world could not support them.

The re'ems live at the opposite ends of the earth, one in the east, the other in the west, and for seventy years never see each other -- until the day of their mating. Finally they meet, mate once, and then the female kills the male with one bite.

The female becomes pregnant, and her pregnancy lasts for twelve years. During the last year she cannot walk, only role from side to side, and she survives only because her saliva waters the earth around her sufficiently to produce enough vegetation for her support. Instead of giving birth, her stomach bursts open and she dies instantly. However, twins are born, one male and one female. They get up immediately and wander away, one to the east, one to the west.

During the flood, when Noah collected all the animals into the arc, the re'ems came to join the procession. However, because of their giant size, they could not fit into the arc. Yet Noah saved them. One version claims he tied them behind the arc, and they followed it by running and later by swimming. Another version tells that the flood happened just as the young re'ems were born, so they were small enough to fit in the arc.

Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.

now..... Anyone can help with Wikinews. If you see a headline linking to an empty story, you can create it. If a story needs to be moved to a new title as events develop, please move it. If you know of a headline story from other sources but don't have time to write a story, don't hesitate to add that headline without a story.

The current rendition of Wikinews is an experimental version that, according to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, offers just a taste of what's to come when the news effort builds momentum. "It's going to take some time to build up."

"One of the things mainstream media does, for better or for worse, is report on news they expect will drive sales," he said. "This means ignoring foreign news, for example, in many cases, because a local audience is not as interested. Since there is not the same economic incentive, the question is what the agenda of Wikinews will look like. I suspect it will reflect the interests and lives of its citizen reporters."

"who the British are to be handing out advice on democracy. Here's a country that never got around to writing down a constitution, that has no bill of rights, that runs its affairs through what, in Soviet times, might have been called a central committee, and does so with a supreme leader at the helm. Tony Blair takes us to war when he feels like it, shooting first and avoiding questions later.

It does so, moreover, on the authority of a figurehead, a hereditary head of state, by means of a set of legally untested conventions and the useful fiction of the Crown-in-parliament. Most amusing of all, if such is your taste, the figurehead has to subscribe to a specified religion. Many societies might regard the fact that a multicultural country still has a Protestant monarchy written into law as the final insult: not us. You are subjects, my friends, not citizens"

"I have posted before about my little OCD problem. I am a lot better than I was ten years ago, but I still have my moments, and many of those moments have to do with choice. Specifically, TEENY TINY MEANINGLESS CHOICES. I am fine with the big ones......... The stuff I can't handle without a System are things like deciding what to eat (I have a whole list at my desk of possible lunch choices, and that list is alphabetized, yo), deciding what shoes to wear (I own nothing but black shoes, and each pair has a nickname, and yes, in my head, IT IS ALPHABETIZED), or deciding what pajamas Nora will wear to bed (they are not alphabetized, it makes no sense to alphabetize pajamas,** but I have an algorithm that I use to make the choice).

Anyway, recently I was standing in the kitchen and using my crazy-ass mental decision tree to decide what to eat, when I realized that what I really wanted to eat was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And then I spent some time trying to work peanut butter and jelly into the equation, so that, mathematically, I would "get" to eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of one of the other choices. But somehow, for the first time in ages, I was able to say BAD DOG to my insane brain and just go ahead and eat peanut butter and jelly because I wanted it.

My sandwich breakthrough is pathetic, I know, but without therapy or Prozac, it will have to do."(via growabrain)

Sunday, 28 November 2004

Right now, 30 percent of all hermit crabs on our shorelines are living in shells that are too small for them. In the springtime, when the animal has its growth spurt, this shortage skyrockets to 60 percent. Hermit crabs, whose own bodies provide only thin exoskeletons, must scavenge and appropriate hard-walled shells abandoned by marine gastropods for shelter. The problem is that there currently are not enough shells left on our beaches for hermit crabs to use.

the Hand Up Project proposes to manufacture alternative forms of housing, specifically designed for use by land hermit crabs, out of plastic. This solution offers multiple benefits. Not only will the project afford the animal badly needed additional forms of shelter, but we also contend that, by utilizing current technology, we may now be better equipped to meet the needs of this life-form than nature ever has.
(via plasticbag.org)

Criminals are to be given vitamin supplements in an attempt to reduce anti-social behaviour which will test the effect of diet on the brain. The proposals being drawn up within the uk Home Office reflect a growing interest in the potential link between junk diets laced with additives and disturbed or hyperactive behaviour.

a small previous study of teenagers in a young offenders' institution carried out by the research charity Natural Justice, found that boosting offenders' diets with supplements reduced disciplinary incidents - such as attacks on fellow inmates and officers, or breaking prison rules - by a third.

"We're spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call Native Americans." ........plus.... "Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on."

Cognitive liberty is the right of an individual to liberty, autonomy and privacy over his or her own intellect, and is situated at the core of what it means to be a free person. This principle is what gave rise to some of our most well-established and cherished democratic rights.

Cognitive liberty presupposes at least these three principles: cognitive privacy (what and how you think should be private unless you choose to share it); cognitive autonomy (self-determination over one's own cognition is central to free will); and cognitive choice (the capabilities of the human mind should not be limited).

new drugs and other technologies are being developed for augmenting, monitoring and manipulating mental processes. The very definitions of medicine and mental health are evolving as a result of the explosion in neurotechnologies and neuropharmaceuticals. With brain implants and memory erasure becoming reality, Wrye Sententia is bringing constitutional rights into your head In an interview with New Scientist, CCLE cofounder Richard Glen Boire made the intimation that cognitive liberty is poised to be one of the major civil rights issues of the century........

The Chiruwi is a Central African half-man, with one leg, one arm and one side. Seen from the missing side he is invisible. He will challenge all those he encounters to a fight. If he is defeated he will beg not to be killed and in return he will offer the knowledge of many medicine. The victor will then became a very successful medicine-man. Should the Chiruwi win, however, he will kill his victim.

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."....EDWARD BERNAYS (1891 - 1995) the father of 'public relations'

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws." ... (-Abraham Lincoln)

"If the public knew the truth, the war would end tomorrow. But they don't know and they can't know." ..... - 1914, Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, to Manchester Guardian editor C.P. Scott, As quoted by Philip Knightly in his book 'The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam - Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth-maker'

"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." .... (Richard Salant, former President of CBS News)

Thursday, 25 November 2004

in the news, on this day 2002

The uk government has loosened controls on arms exports since the September 11 attacks, supplying weapons to countries seen as "on side" in the "war on terror" even if they have poor human rights records, a new report claims. The giant UK arms industry is the world's second largest supplier after the US.

THE ARMS TRADEof the 4 million recorded war related deaths in the 1990s, 90% were civilian - 80% of those were women and children.

here is yet another example of hierarchical power asserting direct control over our individual minds and bodies.

it should instead be the right of every autonomous individual to research, self-medicate and experiment with whatever we choose. it should be a fundamental right for every citizen to be able to choose to explore freedom of perception without intrusion by government or employer.

ironically meanwhile, an ever increasing percentage of adults and children are functioning, for extensive periods of their lives, under the influence of state sanctioned powerful antidepressants.

these authorised psychoactives are taken on a daily basis by thousands of citizens in each country around the world. notably these are not mind expanding drugs, they are mind neutralisers, and it is typical that their impoverished perceptual and cultural contribution is directly inverse to the bumper profits that they generate for the corporate pushers. while it is also surely no coincidence, that as our collective consciousness becomes increasingly more polluted by prescribed psychiatric pharmaceuticals, we currently find ourselves putting up with a radical erosion of our civil liberties and having to endure the most apathetic and ultra-conformist of times.

There would be a new law to stop trespassing on specified royal and government property - a response to batman, the father's rights activist, and the "comedy terrorist" who managed to get into Prince William's birthday party at Windsor Castle last year.

And police would get a new ban on long-term protests outside Parliament: anti-war campaigner Brian Haw has been camped in Parliament Square since 2001.

Civilian community support officers would get new powers to search detained people for dangerous items and deter begging.

Other proposed new police powers include Taking fingerprints and footwear impressions at the roadside rather than in police stations.... and Providing police with the power to arrest for all offences, subject to certain tests, replacing the existing system of arrestable and non-arrestable offences.

the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit yesterday against a Missouri high school that twice admonished a gay student for wearing T-shirts bearing gay pride messages. The suit charges that the school violated the youth's constitutional right to free expression.

By the account of the civil liberties union, the student, Brad Mathewson, a 16-year-old junior, was sent to the principal's office at Webb City High School on Oct. 20 for wearing a T-shirt that he said came from the Gay-Straight Alliance at a school he previously attended, in Fayetteville, Ark. The shirt bore a pink triangle and the words "Make a Difference!"

Mr. Mathewson, the A.C.L.U. said, was told to turn the shirt inside out or go home and change. Instead he traded shirts with a friend, who wore the gay pride shirt the rest of the day without incident.

A week later, Mr. Mathewson was again admonished for wearing a gay pride T-shirt, this one featuring a rainbow and the inscription "I'm gay and I'm proud." Told once more to turn the shirt inside out or leave, he chose to go home and was eventually ordered not to return to school wearing clothing supporting gay rights.

a babelfish translation of an italian site reporting the "where ever you are" naked protest, from green park to parliament. july 2001.

"As mother has made them they protest for the roads of London In throttles in order to have urged dressed people to exit of house without... just like they.

Two English, Vincent Bethell, 28, and Russell Higgs, 40, have been arrest to you endured after one manifestation of protest of the movement Freedom To Be Yourself (Free of being same you) estate for the roads of London.

Bethell, a young artist of Coventry, and Higgs, a mature student of Hackney, to east of London, is accused also to have paraded knots, with to a group of others ten nudists from Green Park to Parliament Square, inviting people to make like they with a megaphone.

John Waterhouse, 22 years, of the north of London, that it has assisted to the manifestation, has reported that the two men invited people to put aim to the own insecurity... turning for the city without sails.

slide show Men knots in extension Knot as a worm protests in Parliament Returns Naked Mile, the crazier race of America clicca here!"

A ghostly black spaniel that haunted Peel Castle (Isle of Man) for many years. It used to enter the guard room as soon as the candles were lighted and leave at daybreak. While it was present, the guards would perform their nightly duties but forebore all oaths and profane talk. One night, a drunken guard, from bravado, performed the rounds alone. He lost his speech and died in three days. The dog has never appear again.

In 1871, during excavations, the bones of Simon, Bishop of Sodor and Man (died 1247) were uncovered, with the bones of a dog at his feet.

"if you've read George Orwell's Animal Farm which he wrote in the mid-1940s, it was a satire on the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state. It was a big hit. Everybody loved it. Turns out he wrote an introduction to Animal Farm which was suppressed. It only appeared 30 years later. Someone had found it in his papers."

The introduction to Animal Farm was about "Literary Censorship in England" and what it says is that obviously this book is ridiculing the Soviet Union and its totalitarian structure. But he said England is not all that different. We don't have the KGB on our neck, but the end result comes out pretty much the same. People who have independent ideas or who think the wrong kind of thoughts are cut out.

When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony Lewis or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, "nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure."

Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going to say the right thing.

If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. The same is mostly true of university faculty in the more ideological disciplines. They have been through the socialization system.

Sunday, 21 November 2004

recycled post...

FIGMENTS OF REALITY:

"Each of us, during every day, uses several different constructions of the universe. We are in 'altered states of consciousness', we are using different constructions of reality, we are in alternate realities. All the evidence we have is that this shifting is essential to us. If we encourage the use of alternate realities we increase the ability of human beings to reach towards new potentials. If we prevent it we damage people."
Leshan and Margenau 'einstein's space and van gogh's sky'

"Moral codes are initially imposed and externally reinforced with harsh punishment and discipline. Fear of reprisal is a great inducement to memory training, leading to the acceptance of a personal sense of responsibility. The whole process produces 'sovereign' individuals let loose on moral auto-pilot who have internalised society's moral rules into their 'conscience'. They become components of a society whose morality is designed to make humans 'regular, calculable and uniform'.
Dave Robinson, 1999, 'Nietzche and postmodernism'

The Swift satellite will detect and analyse gamma-ray bursts - very intense but fleeting flashes of radiation.

Speed is all important - as the name of the observatory suggests.

The gamma-ray event itself may last only a few seconds - although the afterglow that frequently follows a burst continues to emit X-rays, optical light and radio waves for hours or weeks afterwards.

"The only way we can think of to produce such high luminosities is by making a black hole and that is our current best estimate of how these gamma-ray bursts are actually formed," said Professor Keith Mason, from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory and UK lead investigator for the UVOT on Swift.

Gamma-ray bursts were first observed during the Cold War, when Western researchers thought that they might be the product of Soviet nuclear tests on the Moon or on other planets.

Swift will join four other satellites connected to a largely automated system that relays alerts on gamma-ray bursts in real time to scientists worldwide. This network will distribute Swift alerts via e-mail to scientists and to robotic telescopes.

Swift is a Nasa-led mission. "We expect to detect and analyse over 100 gamma-ray bursts a year," said Dr Neil Gehrels, Swift's Principal Investigator at Goddard.

"Swift will lead to a windfall of discovery on these most powerful explosions in the Universe."

British physicists are pushing back the boundaries of super-precise timing. with a clock technology that relies on the behaviour of extremely cold atoms watched over by ultra-quick lasers.

Current atomic clocks count time based on the way caesium atoms jump back and forth between different energy levels. This occurs at microwave frequencies with 9.2 billion jumps making up the moment of time we know as the second.

The very best of these clocks neither lose nor gain the equivalent of one second every 30 million years.

But the new optical clocks now under development operate at much higher frequencies and thus allow for a much finer description of time. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology led the way in 2001 with a set-up based on the energy transitions of a single, cooled mercury ion (an atom with an electron stripped off).

Lasers were used to set the ion jumping and count the ticks - just over a million billion of them every second.

Now the National Physical Laboratory has weighed in with a similar set-up but based on a super-cooled strontium ion. According to the Science journal report, it is "a factor of three more accurate than any previously reported optical frequency measurement".

Berlin and London-based company rAndom has developed the Watch Paper , a clock printed onto ordinary paper.

Using a heat sensitive coating, the minutes and hours blur from one into the other in a very subtle way.

Using segmented LED displays and running from a tiny chip, Watch Paper can be integrated into Wallpaper of any printable size. It appears only when it is needed in order to be an un-obtrusive element of the interior.

Saturday, 20 November 2004

"Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it was a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secret of the universe."....Lex Luthor,

Trance: the practice and the pitfalls by Dennis R Wier"....Socialization itself is the process of putting a person into a long-term trance. You do not go to work naked because of socialization. The socialization process started by parents and continued by religious training, schools, universities and employment in different ways all create a multiplicity of long-term trance-states, the result of which puts you in a bounded circle of limited but socially acceptable activity. Without these long-term trances your life would be more chaotic and perhaps you would be more painfully aware of too many choices. Every choice we make limits our options and makes life seem more manageable....."

Milton h Erickson m.d. and the art of the oral tradition by John s Parke.
".....The effects of literacy are borne out in a number of studies. Scollon and Scollon (1984) show that class and ethnic differences affect classroom learning, particularly when they reflect oral and literate styles. A classroom study found that white middle-class children asked and responded to questions to which they knew the answers. They were able to engage in a schoolroom exercise that was suspended from any context beyond the exercise itself. Black children, however, did not ask questions to which they already knew answers and did not expect others to ask them questions if other’s already knew the answer. Thus when the white teacher asks, "What day is it today?" the white children thoughtlessly respond "Monday." The black children wonder why the teacher doesn't know what day it is. The "rules of order" are familiar to one set but not the other, creating different levels of institutional access....."

What is NLP & Ericksonian Hypnosis?"....Say, for example, you wanted to have someone scratch their nose (not very useful, but its become the example of choice over the years, who am I to argue :) ). Now obviously, if you were to walk up to someone and say "Scratch your nose!", they'd probably at least give you a funny look. But with NLP, the process works a little differently. You might choose to engage in a conversation, in the course of which you might say, "When learning to cook from scratch, it's best if you're willing to ask someone who knows". Now, in there, you have to say three words with a special, and identical, emphasis. This is called Analog Marking , and can be accomplished by any of several ways. Most easily by speaking the words louder, or in a different pitch: "When learning to cook from SCRATCH , it's best if YOU'RE willing to ask someone who KNOWS"...."

media virus!: hidden agendas in popular culture by Douglas Rushkoff"....Utilizing a hypnosis technique first developed by Milton Erickson, the contradictory phrase creates its own unique conceptual slot in the minds of people who hear it. The longer the phrase demands conscious attention, the longer the virus has to inject its memes. If it makes us think, then we cannot be immune to it....."

"At the local Kmart we helped small children take their first steps on the path of disillusionment and enlightenment by pasting stickers saying "This item is free" on whatever their grubby little hands were clutching. The stickers had an actual Kmart logo on them, so the kids squealed with joy while we made for the exit, leaving the parents to deal with the checkout line."

Beware of whores who say they don't want money. The hell they don't. What they mean is they want more money. Much more.

If you're doing business with a religious son-of-a-bitch, Get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit. Not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.

Avoid fuck-ups. We all know the type. Anything they have anything to do with, No matter how good it sounds, Turns into a disaster.

Do not offer sympathy to the mentally ill. Tell them firmly: I am not paid to listen to this drivel. You are a terminal boob.

Now some of you may encounter the Devil's Bargain, If you get that far. Any old soul is worth saving, At least to a priest, But not every soul is worth buying. So you can take the offer as a compliment.

He tries the easy ones first. You know like money, All the money there is. But who wants to be the richest guy in some cemetary? Money won't buy. Not much left to spend it on, eh gramps? Getting too old to cut the mustard.

Well time hits the hardest blows. Especially below the belt. How's a young body grab you? Like three card monte, like pea under the shell, Now you see it, now you don't.

Haven't you forgotten something, gramps? In order to feel something, You've got to be there. You have to be eighteen. You're not eighteen. You are seventy-eight. Old fool sold his soul for a strap-on.

Well they always try the easiest ones first. How about an honorable bargain? You always wanted to be a doctor, Well now's your chance. Why don't you become a great healer And benefit humanity?

What's wrong with that?

Just about everything. Just about everything. There are no honorable bargains Involving exchange Of qualitative merchandise Like souls For quantitative merchandise Like time and money.

JOHN LOCKE is retelling the tale of the young man who had learned to dance.

"there happened to stand an old trunk in the room where he had learned.

his idea of this piece of household stuff had so mixed itself with the steps of all his dances, so that though in that chamber he could dance excellently well, it was only while that trunk was there, nor could he perform well in any other place, unless that or some other trunk had its due position in the room."

"the most sophisticated Sex Doll in history, is created from an actual life-casting of celebrity model Pandora Peaks."

"She is anatomically correct, robotically actuated, and made from a technically advanced formula of a durable, ultra-realistic flesh-like elastomeric gel, supported by an articulated skeleton. Her superlative and compelling realism appeal to all the senses - she speaks, she moves, she looks, feels, and smells real."(via wired news)

Technologies used to spin wool have been adapted to produce yarns made solely from carbon nanotubes

In a collaborative effort, scientists at CSIRO Textile and Fibre Technology (CTFT) have achieved a major technological breakthrough that should soon lead to the production of futuristic strong, light and flexible 'smart' clothing materials.
In partnership with the world-renowned NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas, CTFT has adapted textile technologies used to spin wool and other fibres to produce yarns made solely from carbon nanotubes (CNTs).

Potential uses of the new material could be the creation of vests and "soft" body armour protecting from bullets and other small ballistic missiles. And as electronic sensors and actuators can be incorporated into CNT yarn, new garments could be produced to act as electrically-driven "muscles" .............
(via near near future)

Friday, 19 November 2004

Australian Aranda (Arunta) mythology .... the Inapertwa are the rudimentary creatures from which two Numbakulla (or self-existing sky deities), made animals, birds, and plants, which they then formed into human beings.

The Inapertwa which became an organism is then the totem of the organism. Thus, each individual belongs to the totem of the plant or animal from which he was transformed. The Numbakulla themselves then became lizards.

methods by which people's behavior can be influenced or modified without their conscious awareness that the influencing is taking place.

The human brain takes in all the information it needs to build a response from even an image flashed for just nano-seconds.

How many frames per second can the human eye see? This is a tricky question. And much confusion about it is related to the fact that this question is NOT the same as: How many frames per second do I have to have to make motions look fluid? And it's not the same as How many frames per second makes the movie stop flickering? And it's not the same as What is the shortest frame a human eye would notice?

Imagine yourself in a very dark room. You have been there for hours and it's totally black. Now light flashes right in front of you. Let's say as bright as the sun. Would you see it, when it's only 1/25th of a second? You surely would. 1/100th of a second? Yes. 1/200th of a second? Yes. Tests with Air force pilots have shown, that they could identify the plane on a flashed picture that was flashed only for 1/220th of a second.

That's identifying. So it's pretty safe to say, that recognizing, that SOME light was there is possible with 1/300th of a second.

The first known use of subliminal suggestions took place in the 1950s. a marketing researcher named James Vicary inserted rapidly flashing words between the frames of a film to stimulate refreshment sales in a Fort Lee, N.J., movie house. "Hungry? Eat popcorn" or the words "Drink Coca-Cola" were flashed for 0.003 of a second every 5 seconds over Kim Novak's face, during a six-week run of the movie Picnic. Lobby sales of Coke increased 58 percent and popcorn sales climbed 18 percent, or so the story goes. though it is also said that James Vicary later admitted the study was fabricated.

The term subliminal message was popularized in a 1957 book, Vance Packard's alarming bestseller, The Hidden Persuaders.

The tangential thesis of the book is that by the mid-fifties, the standard problems in capitalism -- those of production and distribution of goods -- were solved, but that this introduced another problem: all of these goods must be consumed. So, it became necessary to step up the techniques used to market these goods.

once upon a time a television commercial for children's toys included the subliminal message "Get it!" until the Federal Communications Commission issued a warning against further TV or radio subliminations.

in 1979 Time magazine ran a story called "Secret Voices -- Messages that Manipulate." The story tells how would-be shoplifters often have a change of heart that isn't due to honesty, but to a "little black box," -- an electronic conscience.

Behind the pleasant background music played in stores, there's a subliminal anti-theft message, "I am honest, I will not steal," being played 9,000 times an hour at very low volume and speeded up (2 1/2 times normal speed......Using a Variable Speech Controller (VSC), recorded speech can be speeded up without increasing the pitch and sounding like Donald Duck). the words are barely audible to shoppers and employees. But they do register in some deep recess of the brain and apparently influence behavior.

Time quote: "About 50 department stores in the U.S. and Canada have installed the device to reduce shoplifting and employee theft. One undisclosed East Coast chain is said to have cut the number of thefts by 37%, for a savings of $600,000, during a nine-month trial.

black box inventor Hal C. Becker, president of Behavioral Engineering Corp in Metairie, Louisiana, Says: "I see no reason why there won't be audio-conditioning in the same way we now have air conditioning."

but as Aryeh Neier, former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, puts it, "people have a right to go about their business without being subjected to manipulation they don't even know about."

Two months after the Time article, The Wall Street Journal ran a story offering many examples of successful subliminal use, including this mention: "At McDonagh Medical Clinic in Gladstone, MO, patients waiting for a special type of intravenous therapy that takes up to four hours are told subliminally not to be anxious. Fainting spells used to be a problem for some awaiting treatment, but clinic administrator W.D. Johnson says there haven't been any since the messages began."

When the Gulf War began, one of the first people the Army shipped to the war zone was a silent-subliminal specialist. he is reported to have said "Iraq soldiers were bombarded with subliminal messages urging them to give up and surrender."

In 1994, Newsweek ran an article titled, "A Subliminal Dr. Strangelove." It goes on to explain how the FBI Counter-Terrorism Center met with a "long-haired Russian Dr. Strangelove called Igor Smirnov." Igor was consulted about running subliminal messages behind the phone calls while negotiating with David Koresh during the Waco Branch Davidian crisis. Although the FBI claims not to have used the technology, they did meet with this representative from Moscow's Institute of Psycho-Correction.

In Smirnov’s cluttered lab, Slava, a tattooed heroin addict, has electrodes attached to his chest and shaved head. He has just watched subliminal messages on a screen and listened through earphones to other impulses disguised as noise. Smirnov says he’s trying to stimulate the child-rearing cluster of Slava’s brain to encourage him to care more for his soon-to-be born baby and less about his next hit of heroin.

Smirnov says that in Soviet times, the government funded his lab generously. Now that Russia’s economy has collapsed, and with it funding for the security forces and military, Smirnov gets only $20.000 a year, he says. He hopes to attract Western investment.

"for subliminals to be effective, you must be favorably disposed to the programming goal. This is why we primarily use the technology in association with altered-state programming"

on September 13, 2000 cnn reported that "Two Democratic senators have asked the Federal Communications Commission for an "immediate and impartial" review of the Republican National Committee's controversial "RATS" ad, according to sources in Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign."

CNN slowed down a copy of the ad, and the word "RATS" clearly appeared on the screen in large, white letters superimposed over the words "The Gore Prescription Plan." In a fraction of a second, the word disappeared, and the words "BUREAUCRATS DECIDE" showed up in smaller letters. To viewers aware of the presence of the word, it is noticeable when the ad is played at normal speed.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, told reporters on Tuesday that he believed the appearance of "RATS" in the RNC ad was accidental.

Bush said he was "convinced" that the ad was not intended to send a subliminal message. (Bush more than once mispronounced the word as "subliminable.")

An enormous hound of the Scottish Highlands. It is said to be a dark green in color, with a long braided tail and the size of a bullock. Whenever his baying was heard on the moors, farmers would quickly lock up their women because the hound's mission was to round up women and drive them to a fairy mound so they might supply milk for fairy children.

The uk Government is planning a change in the law to allow police to arrest suspects without evidence, it was claimed. The Law Society said it believed the new powers would be included in the Bill which will create the new British FBI.

A Law Society spokesman said they had been told on good authority that the new powers of arrest were being considered by ministers. It warned that the cumulative effect of the Government’s clampdown on crime and terrorism would be a step towards a police state.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me. .....Pastor Martin Niemöller

Wednesday, 17 November 2004

on condition of anonymity Senior police officers say they have been ordered to help rig the result of the Ukrainian presidential election and to use violence, including bombings, to undermine the opposition.

The second, decisive, round of the presidential election is to be held next Sunday when the two candidates, the pro-Western opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, who gained the biggest share of the vote in the first round on 31 October, and the pro-Russian Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, face each other in a run-off.

The colonel said that police had guarded a room in a local authority building where about 500,000 ballots, pre-marked for Mr Yanukovych, were kept hidden before the first round and organised their dispersal on voting day among local polling stations.

The Ukrainian Central Election Commission was forced to admit that tens of thousands more votes had been cast in the first round than there were genuine ballot papers.

The men also said a special police undercover unit had been formed to intimidate opposition workers and destroy campaign materials. They said the group planted a bomb in a Yushchenko campaign office and another in the car of an opposition activist, Yuriy Potykun, who was then stopped and arrested by uniformed police.

The colonel said a group of about 100 common criminals have been paid to masquerade at Yushchenko rallies as supporters of the opposition candidate, to cause trouble and give the opposition a bad name....

An independent inquiry has concluded thousands of UK Gulf War veterans were made ill by their service.

The inquiry said there probably were a number of causes - these included multiple injections of vaccines, the use of organophosphate pesticides to spray tents, low level exposure to nerve gas, and the inhalation of depleted uranium dust - but said it was fair to describe the illnesses collectively as Gulf War syndrome. A small proportion of those who are ill have the classic symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, but this could not account for the great majority of those that are ill. About 6,000 veterans of the conflict are believed to be suffering from ill-health.

It called on the MoD to establish a special fund to make compensation payments to veterans of the 1991 conflict whose health had been damaged. Despite paying pensions to thousands of veterans, the MoD has never accepted that their illnesses are linked to their service. The inquiry report said all the scientific studies agreed Gulf veterans were twice as likely to suffer from ill health than if they had been deployed elsewhere.

Tony Flint of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association said the report conclusions justified what the veterans had been saying about Gulf war syndrome for years. He said it was now time for the MoD to take heed of Lord Lloyd's proposals and compensate the veterans for the illnesses they have suffered.

july 1950, Early in the Korean War American soldiers machine-gunned hundreds of helpless civilians under a railroad bridge in the South Korean countryside.

When the families spoke out, seeking redress, they met only rejection and denial, from the U.S. military and their own government in Seoul. Now a dozen ex-GIs have spoken, too, and support their story with haunting memories from a forgotten war.

"People pulled dead bodies around them for protection. Mothers wrapped their children with blankets and hugged them with their backs toward the entrances...... My mother died on the second day of shooting." .....Chung Koo-ho, 61,survivor of the No Gun Ri massacre

"I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. ...

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country." .........John Kerry, Navy lieutenant, leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee April 23, 1971

The number of babies born deformed and children suffering leukaemia have soared because of the "deadly legacy" of depleted uranium shells used by British and American forces in Iraq, human rights campaigners claimed.

Releasing details of health problems and human rights violations suffered by Iraqi children, they claim the country's youngsters faced a worse existence today than they did under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

Depleted uranium was widely used by Allied forces to penetrate Iraqi tank armour in the Gulf Wars of 1991 and again last year.

Opponents claim the dust it releases upon impact is rapidly absorbed into the body, causing an upsurge of serious health problems inherited by Iraqi children during the past 13 years from their parents.

"The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy." ...Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General

"You can fool some of the people all of the time--and those are the ones you have to concentrate on!" ---George W. Bush

" I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street."

General Smedley D. Butler, former U.S. Marine Commandant, November 1935

The 30-second clip shows the pilot targeting the group of people in a street in the city of Fallujah and asking his mission controllers whether he should "take them out". He is told to do so and, shortly afterwards, the footage shows a huge explosion where the people were. A second voice can be heard on the clip saying: "Oh, dude."

At no point during the exchange between the pilot and controllers does anyone ask whether the Iraqis are armed or posing a threat. Critics say it proves war crimes are being committed.

The vehicle at the far left of the video is a farm tractor, facing away. The engine is running as is evidenced by the hot vertical exhaust tupe and the glowing undercarriage seen in the thermal image. Attached to the rear of the tractor is a plough, and the dirt in the foreground shows clear furrows.

We can deduce several facts from the video.

From the perspective seen in the video, it is clear that the Apache helicopter is not being threatened. It is hovering, moving slowly forward, and not engaging in any evasive maneuvers which would suggest that the individuals on the ground have threatened the apache in any way.

From the body language of the individuals on the ground, it is clear that they themselves do not feel they are doing anything which should be of concern to a US helicopter hovering nearby. In other words, they do not act like the object thrown into the field near the tractor is anything the US helicopter would object to. No sooner has the man delivered the object to the tractor than he turns and walks back to the car. At no time does he (or anyone else) act like they are trying to escape the area until the Apache opens fire.
(via what really happened)

Asma Khamis al-Muhannadi, a doctor who witnessed the US and Iraqi National Guard raid the general hospital said, “We were tied up and beaten despite being unarmed and having only our medical instruments.”

She said the hospital was targeted by bombs and rockets during the initial siege of Fallujah, and troops dragged patients from their beds and pushed them against the wall.

Al-Muhannadi went on to say that all of them were put under intense inspection and, “Two female doctors were forced to totally undress.”

She continued on, “I was with a woman in labor,” she said, “The umbilical cord had not yet been cut. At that time, a US soldier shouted at one of the (Iraqi) national guards to arrest me and tie my hands while I was helping the mother to deliver. I will never forget this incident in my life.”

In Iraq, any Iraqi, at anytime, could be detained by the U.S. military without charge, held indefinitely, and there is nothing they can do about it. It is a place where the mightiest military on earth is the judge, jury and oftentimes, the executioner.

What I can report from Falluja is that there is no cease fire, and apparently never was. Iraqi women and children are being shot by American snipers. Over 600 Iraqis have been killed by American aggression, and the residents have turned two football fields into graveyards. Ambulances are being shot by the Americans. And now they are preparing to launch a full scale invasion of the city.

A technology, developed by Paris-based Ros Kiri Ing and Mathias Fink, can turn any rigid surface into an interactive interface for electronic systems.

Sensitive Object uses one or two inexpensive accelerometers to detect finger taps on, say, a shop window or a keyboard drawn on a blackboard.

A computer chip calculates the exact origin of each tap and translates that information into mouse clicks and keystrokes. The system can work with a surface as large as four square meters, and the number of “keys” can reach 544.
(via near ear future)

Blendie 2000 is a free standing blender as seen in the video documentation. Any person may walk up and try to talk with Blendie. If they make their voice sufficiently blender-like then Blendie 2000 will begin to pitch-track and power-match their voice. For example, if the person growls low pitch low volume at the blender it will spin slowly. If they want to mix sticky peanut butter or crush ice slowly they may need to keep the same pitch but increase volume for more torque. To ask Blendie 2000 to whip some cream fast the person will have to make a higher pitched blender sound for Blendie to match and whip with.
(via b3ta)

Jormungand is one of the three children of the god Loki and his wife, the giantess Angrboda. Jormungand took the form of a serpent, (his elder brother Fenrir took the form of a wolf while his younger sister Hel was half alive and half dead.)

The gods were well aware that this monster was growing fast and that it would one day bring much evil upon gods and men. So Odin deemed it advisable to render it harmless. He threw the serpent in the ocean that surrounds the earth, but the monster had grown to such an enormous size that it easily spans the entire world, hence the name Midgard Serpent. It lies deep in the ocean where it bites itself in its tail, and all mankind is caught within his coils.

During Ragnarok (the battle at the end of the world) Jormungand and Thor will kill each other.